Wednesday, April 21, 2004

I'm with my entire high school on a field trip to my elementary school, Carroll Manor Elementary. I'm the only kid in my high school who went here, and I'm kind of amazed at all the changes. For instance, the library has a huge glass window that faces into the main lobby and entrance now. All my high school classmates are being herded around and shown things by our teachers, everyone doing that kind of weak shuffle as they walk slowly through the place. I'm kind of excited to be back here for some reason, so I'm cutting through the crowd and walking off whenever I feel like it, peeking in classrooms. The elementary school teachers don't really care, but the high school teachers are not psyched, but I still act as if I can't get in trouble for anything. And I don't.

When everyone else is getting on busses to leave, for some reason I get into a car with somebody's grandparents and two other kids, one of whom is a skinny kid with really good posture, glasses, and the beginnings of a puberty mustache. The other kid is a little, underdeveloped dude with dirty brown hair who just laughs. On the way through the parking lot, I pick up this nice, mountain-climbery backpack that is just lying in the parking lot and bring it into the car with me. I'm still in a really good mood, and I tell the grandparents and the other kids in the car that I must be stupid for not driving here myself because I live so close to this place, and it makes no sense for me to drive all the way back to Timonium to get my car at the high school, only to come all the way back here. The grandparents put a tape on the stereo and explain it's the mustache-kid's music. I think to myself that it sounds too much like Prefuse 73, but I don't say anything out loud about it I don't think. I'm not sure if they're HIS grandparents, but they seem really into/proud of the music. The kid sits perfectly straight up and looks straight ahead with a super-serious look on his face and I think to myself, "What's this guy's deal?"

Since no one else is talking, I start examining the backpack and tell everyone that I found it and picked it up. It has a tube that runs around it and curls around the neck of the person who wears it. It's pink+reddish, and made of soft plastic, maybe polyurethene? I'm not really sure if that's the right word for it, but it's probably 2-3 inches in diameter and flexible. I open the backpack and there's one sheet of paper in it. On the back of the paper there's a photocopied article about Mel Gibson's wife. I realize that she's wearing this exact backpack in the accompanying picture, and that the article explains what the tube is. It's a dildo. A long, flexible dildo that wraps around the backpack. On one of the straps there's an electronic switch that makes it vibrate. I tell everyone I could probably sell this for a lot of money on Ebay, but the grandparents tell me that I have to give it back to Mel Gibson's wife, it's not right to sell it. I don't really care what they think because I don't even know who they are. I turn the paper over and there's another magazine article about Mel Gibson's wife, although this one is about her work with charities. I start to think that this backpack is a secret, that the article that's photocopied on the back is probably from some publication that only super-super famous people get, and that if regular people ever found out about the dildo-backpack, it would be a huge scandal.